CFI Working Paper

SMALL DONORS, LARGE DONORS AND THE INTERNET:

"The public funding system for presidential elections collapsed in
2008. The policy question for the future will be whether to revive it
at all and, if so, how."

So begins a twenty-page Campaign Finance Institute
working paper by CFI's Executive Director, Michael J. Malbin, who is
also a professor of political science at the University at Albany,
SUNY. The paper is slated to be published later this year in a book to
be edited by Costas Panagopoulos, director of Fordham University's
Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy. A copy of the full paper,
including updated 2008 tables is attached and also available here.

In the paper, Malbin argues that to the extent the original 1974
presidential system's goals were based on putting a lid on campaign
spending, those goals clearly have failed. And yet, he continues, the
failure of one flawed mechanism should hardly end the debate: "Some of
the law's original purposes ... cannot be achieved. Others – such as
promoting competition, candidate emergence and public participation –
can be helped through some forms of public support, but the system
needs a redesign" to be effective in serving those ends.

Interestingly, the main public financing bills introduced so far in the
111th Congress seem to agree with the working paper's basic assessment
of the policy implications to be derived from these data. The
presidential public financing bill expected shortly from Senators
Feingold and Collins, as well as a congressional bill already
introduced by Senators Durbin and Specter, foreswear the hard spending
limits that used to dominate public presentations of the issue.
Instead, the two bills – while different in many significant features –
provide multiple matching funds for small contributions up to a public
funding maximum. They then allow unlimited fundraising and spending
from candidates who raise their ongoing funds from donors who give only
small amounts.

"By putting these ideas forward at the end of this
essay," Malbin writes, "I am not endorsing them as the best of all
possible solutions. Rather, they are put forward to show that the
collapse of the current system, particularly the collapse of its
spending limits, does not signal a fatal flaw with public financing per se. There are many ways to design a
system to further competition, candidate emergence and citizen
participation while respecting the constitutional limits. To do so,
however, it is important to recognize that the goals themselves have to
be part of the conversation…. While public financing may be tough to
sell, that is a more of a political than a policy flaw."

Readers are invited to weigh in after reading the paper and post their responses on the
CFI’s Research Commons,
a nonpartisan, non-advocacy forum and campaign finance library made
available freely for those with a professional interest in campaign
finance. Contributors to the CFI Research Commons include authors of
scholarly papers, studies by advocacy organizations, campaign finance
data, and other campaign finance related material.

The Campaign Finance Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit institute
affiliated with the George Washington University celebrating its tenth
year of research. Statements of the Campaign Finance Institute and its
Task Forces do not necessarily reflect the views of CFI's Trustees or
financial supporters.